Active and Passive Voice
ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VOICE

Active and Passive Voice in English

What is Active and Passive Voice?

"Voice is that form of a 'VERB' which shows whether what is described by the subject, does something / has something done to it."

Active and passive are the two grammatical voices in English. In the active voice, the sentence’s subject performs the action and in the passive voice, the subject is acted upon by the verb.

Structure of Active and Passive voice:

Structure of Active voice

Subject Verb Object
The dog chased the cat.
(dog - subject) (chased - verb) (cat - object)

Structure of Passive voice

Object Verb Subject
The cat was chased by the dog.
(cat - object) (chased - verb) (dog - subject)
Let us understand in brief, how Active and Passive work:
Active Voice

In active voice, the subject of the sentence is the person or thing that does the action.

Example:
  • • Sita helps Geeta.
  • Note: Here in this sentence Sita is the subject and she does Something – helps Geeta. The verb helps is in a ACTIVE FORM.
Passive Voice

In passive voice, the verb is performed by someone or something other than the subject; often, the action is done to the subject by someone else.

Example:
  • • Geeta is helped by Sita.
  • Note: In this sentence Verb "helped" shows that something is done to the person denoted by the subject. The Verb HELPED is in a PASSIVE FORM.
Rules for Conversion (Active to Passive)
The subject and object are inter-changed. i.e. 'food'.
Example:
  • Active Voice
  • • He eats food.
  • Passive Voice
  • • The food is eaten by him.
The preposition 'by' is used before the object in the passive.
Example:
  • Active Voice
  • • He eats food.
  • Passive Voice
  • • The food is eaten by him.
The verb is changed (from 'eats' to 'eaten') to past participle form.
Example:
  • Active Voice
  • • He eats food.
  • Passive Voice
  • • The food is eaten by him.
A new Auxiliary verb 'is' added to the past participle form of a verb (is).
Example:
  • Active Voice
  • • He eats food.
  • Passive Voice
  • • The food is eaten by him.
WHY DO WE USE PASSIVE VOICE?

The Passive voice is used because:

The doer is unknown, or we want to be silent about doer.
Example:
  • • The Money was stolen.
The action is more important.
Example:
  • • Cigarette Smoking is injurious to health.
It makes doer important.
Example:
  • • The Taj Mahal was built by Shahjahan.
It makes the statement more formal or polite or persuasive.
Example:
  • • My Parker pen has been Stolen. (My pen is stolen)
  • • People say you are very rude. (You are very rude)
  • • You have come late. (I thought you will come in time.)
Usage of Active and passive voice:
Examples:
  • • We made mistakes. (Active)
  • • Mistakes were made. (Passive)
  • • He has written a novel. (Active)
  • • A novel has been written by him. (Passive)
  • • The dog chases the ball. (Active)
  • • The ball is being chased by the dog. (Passive)
  • • The class is reading the book. (Active)
  • • The book is being read by the class. (Passive)
  • • Riya made a cake yesterday. (Active)
  • • A cake was made by my Riya yesterday. (Passive)
  • • The police have caught the thief. (Active)
  • • The thief has been caught by the police. (Passive)

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